Posted!

Join the Conversation

Comments

Welcome to our new and improved comments, which are for subscribers only.
This is a test to see whether we can improve the experience for you.
You do not need a Facebook profile to participate.

You will need to register before adding a comment.
Typed comments will be lost if you are not logged in.

Please be polite.
It's OK to disagree with someone's ideas, but personal attacks, insults, threats, hate speech, advocating violence and other violations can result in a ban.
If you see comments in violation of our community guidelines, please report them.

Opinion: Who has time during a pandemic to pay attention to articles that have to do with a boring subject like legislative redistricting?

A piece of artwork reminds community members to stay at home on April 25 in Shiprock. The Navajo Nation is under a weekend curfew to combat the spread of the coronavirus.(Photo: Noel Lyn Smith/The Daily Times)

There is probably no better time to disenfranchise an entire group of people than during a pandemic.

We’re all preoccupied. We live daily with new revelations, new concerns, new curiosities about COVID-19. Gov. Doug Ducey has reopened the state and we look now to see if there will be upticks in cases of the virus, or how businesses will choose to safely reopen their doors, or weather our normal lives will regain their normalcy.

Who has time to pay attention to articles that have to do with a boring subject like legislative redistricting?

And how a piece of legislation called Senate Concurrent Resolution 1018 would, essentially, leave Arizona’s indigenous people without a voice in state government.

Republican Sen. J.D. Mesnard, the resolution’s sponsor, says it’s all about the great American tradition of "one person, one vote."

He said, "There is very little that is more fundamental to our representative democracy than equal representation.”

Actually, it’s all about a bunch of people having no voice.

Sounds innocuous, but is it?

The resolution, meant to go before voters, would require that each legislative district have no more than 5,000 more residents when compared with any other district.

Sound innocuous enough, right?

But it would have the effect of essentially wiping out the only state legislative district where Native Americans are a majority, which allows them the opportunity to have at least a measure of representation in the state legislature.

And we would be contemplating such a thing at a time when Native people in Arizona, particularly Navajo, have much more on their minds.

A time when Navajo leaders have needed to impose strict curfews on their people in order to try to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Having limitations imposed upon them

A time when the situation has gotten so dire that a team of nine medical professionals from Doctors without Borders were sent to provide assistance to the Navajo Nation in Kayenta and Gallup, New Mexico.

As of Tuesday, there were 4,071 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 142 deaths on the Navajo Nation.

The tribe’s public health system has strained to the point of being overwhelmed. The virus spread has been compounded by limitations to running water and sewage systems, things the rest of us take for granted. There also is sparse internet access.

Over time, indigenous people have had more than a few limitations placed on them. The small voice they have in state government could be limited even further by SCR1018.